Renewable energy sources such as solar, wind, wave, falling water, and biomass have tremendous potential, but various technical challenges have prevented their widespread adoption. For example, using renewable energy sources in the production of electricity is dependent on the availability of the energy sources, which can be intermittent. Solar energy is limited by the sun's availability (i.e., daytime only); wind energy is limited by the variability of wind; falling water energy is limited by droughts; and biomass energy is limited by seasonal variances. As a result of these and other factors, much of the energy from renewable sources, captured or not captured, tends to be wasted.
The inefficiencies associated with conventional approaches to capturing and storing energy often lead to high costs for producing energy from renewable energy sources. These high costs limit the widespread adoption of renewable energy sources in many regions of the world. Thus, the world continues to rely on oil and other fossil fuels as primary energy sources because, at least in part, government subsidies and other programs supporting technology developments associated with fossil fuels make it deceptively convenient and seemingly inexpensive to use such fuels. At the same time, the replacement cost for the expended resources, and the costs of environmental degradation, health impacts, and other byproducts of fossil-fuel use are not included in the purchase price of the energy resulting from these fuels.
In light of the foregoing and other drawbacks currently associated with sustainably using renewable resources, there remains a need for improving the efficiencies and commercial viabilities of producing products and fuels with such resources.